Right Angle began as a column in the now-defunct Sunday magazine in November 1991. The column allowed me the luxury of presenting an alternative to the prevailing left-liberal consensus in India. It has become the implicit signature tune for all my subsequent writings.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Those familiar with elections in West Bengal prior
to the Mamata storm of 2011 may not find it too difficult to understand the
dynamics of Assembly polls in Gujarat since 1995. A dominant party, with deep
social and organisational roots, was periodically confronted with patchy
challenges that often led to occasional upsets in isolated constituencies. It
was also the case that an opposition that seemed moribund during the
non-election years suddenly sprang to life and secured tacit endorsements from
a media that had its own scores to settle with the established order. No one
doubted the end result but there was furious speculation over the margin of
victory. Did a spectacularly high turnout—recall that in many parts of West
Bengal the long queues meant that polling had to be extended by many
hours—suggest that there was a ‘silent undercurrent’ for change?

There is, however, one significant difference. In
West Bengal, Jyoti Basu was the dominant figure from 1977 until his retirement
in 2000. For the Left and for many others, he was a patrician-like figure who
commanded respect. His rallies were well attended but sober occasions. For all
his personal appeal, Basu was no great orator and his staccato sentences,
riddled with more common sense than Marxism, were often looked upon with quiet
amusement. If there was ‘electricity’ in the air, it was impossible to detect
it from a Basu rally. The CPI(M) was a machine that worked with quiet
efficiency.

To really understand an election in Gujarat, it is
obligatory to attend an election rally addressed by Narendra Modi. I have been to
umpteen meetings addressed by Gujarat’s longest-serving Chief Minister but his
election rallies are special.

In 2002, when the riots and the so-called communal
question dominated the agenda, I saw the Modi phenomenon at work for the first
time. It was late in the evening and the location was a crossroad deep inside Dariapur,
an area in Ahmedabad that had become infamous since the 1980s for unending
Hindu-Muslim clashes. One lane from the chowk led to a Muslim locality and the
others to Hindu-dominated areas where, it could well be said, the votes for the
BJP were weighed rather than counted.

It was a star-studded evening. First L.K. Advani
would speak and be followed by Modi. As usually happens, the timings went a bit
awry. Advani had barely spoken for five minutes when he was silenced by a roar,
originating from the rear and then overwhelming the entire crowd like a Mexican
wave. Modi had arrived and the crowd reacted with absolute frenzy. Discretion
getting the better of hierarchy, Advani took the message, ended his speech
abruptly and departed. The audience had made it clear this was Modi’s election.

I witnessed a repeat performance in 2007 at a more
middle class venue in the Sabarmati constituency, on the outskirts of
Ahmedabad. Crushed by a human wave that surged forward to get a better view and
wave to a man who had been declared “Lion of Gujarat” , it was easy to forget
that this was an election rally and not a rock concert. The absence of music
was duly compensated by the audience’s gleeful anticipation of Modi’s one
liners.

In 2002, they used to wait for his ‘Mian Musharraf”
lines; this election, and despite a voice that grew hoarse in the final days of
the campaign, the familiar mix of boisterous youth and middle-aged women who
occupied the stall seats eagerly awaited the mention of ‘Madam Sonia ben’ and
‘Rahul baba’. At the meeting in a working class locality in old Ahmedabad, it
didn’t really matter what Modi was taunting the Congress President and the heir
apparent with. What was important was that Modi was on the offensive and at his
sarcastic best.

Translated versions of his Gujarati speeches often drag
Modi into controversy. They are so totally different from the deferential idiom
of pol-speak in Hindi. In Gujarat, however, the popular reception to his
flamboyant irreverence, often laced with a touch of self-deprecation, is
rapturous. In everyday life Gujaratis may be abstemious, even a bit austere,
but their self-expression (or so my Gujarati friends inform me) is often biting,
without being bawdy. Modi has mastered the art of penetrating the heart of the
Gujarati. He has his finger firmly on the pulse of their concerns, their
aspirations and even their prejudices.

In the aftermath of the 2002 riots, Modi was painted
by India’s uber secularists as an ugly, fringe phenomenon born out the basest
of Hindu prejudices. By 2007, the obnoxious Hindu had been modified into one of
into a disagreeable Gujarati who, as Ashis Nandy once suggested also reflected
the ugly side of its middle classes. And in 2012, he is being pilloried for
presenting a flawed development as the national alternative.

That Modi remains a controversial politician is
undeniable. But what is significant is how much the goalposts have shifted and
the remarkable extent to which Modi has entered the mainstream discourse—not
for his lapses in 2002 but for his achievements in the past decade. Despite all
the rhetorical flourishes that characterise every time the voters are asked to
choose, the 2012 election was really a test of bread and butter issues. Had the
development process in Gujarat been utterly skewed and left the so-called aam
aadmi untouched, it is doubtful that Modi would have been re-elected in an
election where voter turnout touched a 70 per cent high. The absence of any
focussed anti-incumbency would suggest that the indictment of the Gujarat model
did not correspond to people’s lived experiences. In presiding over high economic
growth and the improvement in the quality of life, Modi could be said to have
delivered. To those who have long argued that a high growth strategy centred on
infrastructure, capacity building and state efficiency is a certain election
loser—witness the examples of Vajpayee, Chandrababu Naidu and even Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee—Modi is proof that the opposite also holds good. Perhaps Manmohan
Singh should take heart.

The question that now confronts the political
establishment of India is stark: can Modi and his model be posited as the path
for India? There are no easy, pre-determined answers. Nor is this the most
appropriate moment to speculate on whether or not Modi will be among the
choices in the next general election. As Harold Macmillan famously said,
“events” can often unsettle calculations. Yet, some larger conclusions from
Thursday’s election results are warranted.

It is clear
that what has derisively been called the ‘Modi cult’ is no longer confined to
one mid-sized state of western India, it has infected the rank-and-file of the
BJP and a sizable section of the middle classes yearning for high growth,
purposeful leadership and integrity in public life. Much more needs to be done
but Modi, it would seem, has quietly reinvented himself.

Whether this push from below is sufficient to catapult
Modi to the national stage is now the big question. India, unfortunately,
doesn’t have a system of primaries to determine leadership question in
political parties. Yet, the Gujarat election has come closest to settling the
issue for the BJP. The party would be foolish to not heed the message.

Prime Minister Modi is still a distant dream. But if
the momentum generated by his political victory in Gujarat gathers pace, India
could yet witness the unravelling of politics as we know it. At every stage
since 2002, the bar on assessing Modi has been raised. Each time Modi has both
met the challenge and readied himself for greater heights.

About Me

The Right is an endangered community in India's English-language media. I happen to be one of the few to have retained a precarious toehold in the mainstream media. I intend this blog as a sounding board of ideas and concerns.
You can read the details of my education, professional experience and political inclinations on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swapan_Dasgupta).
RIGHT ANGLE is an archive of my published articles. USUAL SUSPECTS is my blog.